Should Friday be the New Saturday? Hours Worked and Hours Wanted

Gregor Jarosch, Laura Pilossoph and Anthony Swaminathan

No 33577, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper investigates self-reported wedges between how much people work and how much they want to work, at their current wage. More than two-thirds of full-time workers in German survey data are overworked—actual hours exceed desired hours. We combine this evidence with a simple model of labor supply to assess the welfare consequences of tighter weekly hours limits via willingness-to-pay calculations. According to counterfactuals, the optimal length of the workweek in Germany is 37 hours. Introducing such a cap would raise welfare by .8-1.6% of GDP. The gains from a shortened workweek are largest for workers who are married, female, white collar, middle aged, and high income. An extended analysis integrates a non-constant wage-hours relationship, falling capital returns, and a shrinking tax base.

JEL-codes: E0 H0 J0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-03
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